T-RACES: Testbed for the Redlining Archives of California's Exclusionary Spaces

"T-RACES: Testbed for the Redlining Archives of California's Exclusionary Spaces" is a project that "mashes up a popular commercial platform with public records housed at the National Archives in order to position digital material in a very particular way. At one level, T-RACES functions as a well-conceived archive, making available in digital form important historical documents concerning urban development and U.S. racial history. That alone is highly commendable. However, the vision for the project extends beyond simply providing access to these records. Rather, the project brings these historical documents together with an informed body of scholarly research, creating the stage for important and timely investigations into the many ways in which the built landscape works in tight feedback loops with social attitudes about race. Put differently, the project can both provide materials for new scholarly investigations in several humanities disciplines and itself serve as an excellent example of new computationally-driven outcomes for humanities research. The concerns of scholarship and data preservation are deeply intertwined in the project, enriching both the research and the archive. This is an archive with a point of view, moving beyond the 'neutral' presentation of data toward an interpretative modality. At a time when many are expressing concern about the need for new directions for the humanities, T-RACES offers up a compelling model for new collaborations between humanities scholars, archivists, and technologists." – Tara McPherson, Vectors Editor